Getting The Right Attitude For Gratitude

RALPH DE LA CRUZ COMMENTARY

As I write this, smoke's coming out of my ears after a, uh, "disagreement" with my wife.

She doesn't understand me, I'm convinced. Never mind the nine years of putting up with my snoring and whining and boasting and over-told stories.

I should be thankful, but instead it's "she doesn't understand me."

Yeah, right.

In this me-first world, it's ridiculously easy to convince ourselves not to be thankful. I see those heads nodding. I know I'm not alone.

We're filled with job anxiety -- unless you're in the armed forces. And that kind of job security you could do without.

Relationship anxiety. Chances are you, or half the folks you know, are getting a divorce. Or worse, single and still addicted to Sex and the City.

There's never enough money. And don't even bring up politics.

Life, it sometimes seems, is one big bait-and-switch scam:

You want what's always just beyond reach. And when, as a result of hard work, skill and cunning -- or outright viciousness and theft -- you manage to get it ... well, it's never enough.

Be thankful?

Shut up and pass the turkey. While there's some gravy left.

In this most introspective of holidays, perhaps it's time to 'fess up. Or at least ask an honest question.

Have we lost our gratitude? Have we become an ungrateful country?

It wasn't supposed to be like this, of course.

Or rather, that's not how it was scripted in the first-grade play, the one where all the kids wear Pilgrim hats and Indian bonnets made out of construction paper. And we all know that first-grade dramatization is really the seminal event that imprints the Thanksgiving concept into our consciousness.

Truth is, the first Thanksgiving might not have been much different from what we're experiencing 383 years later.

People scratching out a tough existence take a day off. Not so much to offer thanks to the Almighty, but to each other for a job well done. In oter words, to party.

And it probably wasn't a religious-themed event. Ninety of the participants in 1621 were Patuxet Indians, almost all of whom didn't speak English. Probably not too many Catholics or Protestants in that bunch.

In three days, they went through five freshly killed deer. Ducks, geese, turkeys, maybe cranes and swans as well. That first Thanksgiving would have made a Santeria ritual seem tame.

Two years later, much of the Pilgrims' crop had dried up, or was in the process of doing so. The governor ordered a day of fasting and prayers, and rains subsequently came. So the governor decreed that the Pilgrims take an official day off to give thanks.

Except for isolated proclamations, that was about it for Thanksgiving -- until 1863, when, with the U.S. again fighting for its very survival, another leader got religious about Thanksgiving. In the proclamation making Thanksgiving a national holiday, Abraham Lincoln spoke about the country's growth and bounty:

"They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens ... to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

Can you imagine a modern president saying things like that? Of course, Lincoln had the nerve to do and say a lot of things you couldn't imagine from a modern president.

There's a recurring theme here. Seems Thanksgiving has always been most important when we've supposedly had the least to be thankful for.

The message is obvious: Only when we're hurting do we realize how good we've had it.